34 No. 59 JUSTICE intent to "create or strengthen the decision on the need to use violence, or to create a feeling of hatred, against a group of persons or a member of the group because of their race, religion, national or ethnic origin, origin, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or any other characteristic.“17 For committing this criminal offense, the perpetrator may be sentenced to imprisonment of up to three years. Criminal proceedings against the perpetrator are instituted ex officio by the State Attorney's Office, which may initiate criminal proceedings based on a filed criminal complaint or otherwise obtained knowledge about a committed criminal offense. In contrast to hate speech that is treated as a misdemeanor, in this case it is not enough to merely perform an act of expressing messages in the public sphere that disturb public order and peace, but it is also required that the relevant hate speech be expressed with intent to incite hatred and violence towards members of specific minority groups prescribed by the law. In conclusion, the primary purpose of criminalizing this offense under criminal law is to combat discrimination in order to protect the rights of individuals and society as a whole, by preventing especially serious forms of racism and xenophobia. According to the State Attorney's Office,18 so far Croatian courts have issued about ten final convictions for committing this criminal offense. In most cases, convictions were imposed because of active public incitement to violence and hatred over the internet. A majority of convictions are related to committing this criminal offense against persons of homosexual orientation. In all those cases, the perpetrators received only a suspended sentence. According to available information,19 none of the verdicts were related to incitement to violence or hatred against members of the Jewish people or for denying the Holocaust. There is no regulation that explicitly prohibits Holocaust denial in Croatia and incitement to violence and hatred against members of the Jewish people, or that trivializes the Ustasha-Nazi crimes. For instance, we can find online blogs called "Crna legija – ponos Hrvatske“20 (Black Legion – Croatia's pride) and "=U=staša do groba“21 (=U=stasha for Life), a web page of the so called Association for research of the triple camp Jasenovac, which denies the crimes committed during the Ustasha-Nazi regime.22 Probably the most extreme example of antisemitism at present may be found on the social network Facebook, i.e. on the page "Veritas vos liberabit – Vijesti bez cenzure“ (Veritas vos liberabit - News without censorship). For illustrative purposes, we will list some of the texts published on that page: "Holocaust is the greatest historical lie. Jews are laughing at the masses who accepted their wannabe lies and created various fabrications about non-existing victims, and yet fail to respond to this evidence," "Jews have always been the aggressors, both parasites and aggressors. Considering that they have all mainstream media, film industry, money, politics, education and all other important sectors under their control, they have counterfeited and inverted our reality, our present and our history." Furthermore, the above-mentioned page glorifies Adolf Hitler on a daily basis and calls for "freedom from the Jewish jaws." The above wording is a textbook example of the criminal offense of public incitement to violence and hatred, which is legally explained as follows: In this specific case, both principal acts from the description of the criminal offense were committed: (i) active incitement to violence and hatred: "Jews have always been the aggressors, both parasites and aggressors. Considering that they have all mainstream media, film industry, money, politics, education and all other important sectors under their control, they have counterfeited and inverted our reality, our present and our history"; and (ii) denying the holocaust: "Holocaust is the greatest historical lie." The act was committed by making the relevant texts publicly available on the internet or, more precisely, on a social network that is publicly available to everyone. In view of the content and number of online posts, and considering the fact that the page in question is created on a social network only and exclusively for the purpose of publishing xenophobic and discriminatory posts directed against the Jewish people, it is clear that the perpetrator's only intent is to create or strengthen the desire to use violence, or to create a feeling of hatred against members of the Jewish people. In this particular case, we can conclude that all the characteristics of the criminal offense of public incitement to violence and hatred are present. Despite the fact that the Croatian public sphere is still exposed to the above-mentioned posts and other similar content, none of those cases have been subject to criminal proceedings. 17. Ksenija Turković et al., Komentar kaznenog zakona, Zagreb, 2013. 18. Data obtained from the State Attorney's Office pursuant to authors' written request. 19. Data obtained from the State Attorney's Office pursuant to authors' written request. 20. http://ustasa-vojnicar.blogspot.hr/2005/11/crna-legijaponos-hrvatske.html (last visited March 22, 2017). 21. http://blog.dnevnik.hr/ustasadogroba/ (last visited March 22, 2017). 22. https://drustvojasenovac.wordpress.com/ (last visited March 22, 2017).
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